In this tough economy Kroger hopes to attract more customers by offering Free Health Screenings at participating pharmacies. Heart disease patients know the importance of annual cholesterol checks but they can get quite costly for those without health insurance. This new Health Screening option can provide a little relief in the expense of maintaining a healthy heart.

Kroger grocery stores throughout the U.S. are advertising these free Health Screenings which include:

Cholesterol Check (reportedly includes Total Cholesterol, LDL, Triglycerides and HDL)

Blood Pressure Check

Diabetes Screening

Body Mass Index

A licensed pharmacist performs the tests and discusses the results with you. Most likely you will be given a copy of your test results so that you can bring them to your doctor for review. Heart disease patients experiencing financial stress can use this free screening as their annual cholesterol test. As long as you bring the results to your doctor and the numbers are at “heart disease goal,” there should be no need to obtain a second test. If there are changes made to your cholesterol medication, a second test will need to be done to verify the medicine is working.

People who want to take advantage of this opportunity need to make an appointment by calling the national Kroger number 1-877-444-9689. It is important to see a cardiologist at least once a year if you have heart disease so please do not use this as a substitute for your yearly heart check-up. Find more great tips about cutting costs and maintaining a healthy heart in the book What To Do When You Have Heart Disease.

For several years now, the drug companies have been trying to discover the ultimate drug to increase HDL.

It’s just not that easy to increase your good cholesterol (HDL) with prescription drugs. Right now, niacin is the best way to increase HDL but it has the significant drawback of skin flushing. People who take niacin at first feel very hot and their skin may turn red like a temporary sunburn.

Given all the problems with niacin, a new class of drugs to increase HDL have been attempted on several occasions. One of these new drugs has finally passed the phase 3 trials and may actually go on to FDA approval in the near future. Anacetrapib is being manufactured and tested by Merck for treating dyslipidemia (high bad cholesterol and low good cholesterol). The studies so far are quite promising but many are weary. Pfizer had a similar drug being tested in the same class of drugs but Pfizer’s drug was taken out of testing due to significant problems.

Cardiologists all over would love to have a better option for treating low HDL. Right now though, we can only wait and see how the remaining trials work out for this promising new drug!